The Ancients - Zenobia: Queen of Palmyra

Episode Date: March 2, 2024

Zenobia, queen of the glittering city state of Palmyra, was a titan of the third century Near-East. By defeating the Persian Sassanid Empire in 270 AD and stabilising the Roman East she successfully forged a Palmyran empire stretching from Egypt to Anatolia out of the embers of Rome’s Third Century Crisis. But how did she rise to such power? And how did Rome react to the burgeoning pre-eminence of Palmyra’s crowned Queen?In this episode of The Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined by Emma Southon to explore how Zenobia rose to rule over Rome’s richest provinces and discover how the Emperor Aurelian sought to destroy her fledgling empire. Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code ANCIENTS - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, we're heading to the eastern Mediterranean and one

of the great jewels of the ancient Near East, the city of Palmyra. In the mid-third century AD, this incredibly rich and cosmopolitan city came under the control of an extraordinary queen. Her name was Zenobia. The Roman Empire was in crisis and during that turmoil Zenobia rose to the fore to forge an empire stretching from Egypt to Syria. Her story really stands out in the turbulent tale of Rome's third century crisis. To explain all about this Palmyran queen, from the historian Augusta to her main foe Aurelian, well I was delighted to welcome back to the show the wonderful Dr Emma Southern. I really do hope you enjoy, and here's Emma. Emma, wonderful to have you back on the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me back. It feels like too long since we last chatted about horrible Romans. It has been too long, and we did talk about particularly horrible Romans with that figure of Clodius, didn't we? So of all Romans, he's a very, very interesting one. One of the most horrible. Well, we're talking about a topic slightly different today, but still, we're thinking about Rome, this figure of Zenobia. Now, Emma, sometimes we get this impression of Zenobia almost as this Syrian Boudicca, but her story, it's so much more complicated than that. It really is. To reduce it to a woman fighting against Rome, I think, is to really take out as

much of the complication as you can about what a Roman is and how you think about the Roman Empire and how you think about women in the roman empire as well because basically everything that zenobia does is exactly the same as every other usurper augustus is doing throughout the early third century which is declaring herself an empress and then fighting with other roman troops and fighting other parts of the roman army in order to take over parts of the empire and to be the final man standing or final woman standing. The differences are that unlike people like Claudius Gothicus or whatever, she is a woman and she is from Syria and the parts that she takes over are Syria, Arabia and Egypt. And as a result, she gets described very much as an Eastern invader,

rather than someone from within the Roman Empire taking on the trappings of Roman power and describing herself as an Augusta and being the one and only, to my reading, woman who tries to take over the empire during the third century crisis. Well, so much to explore in there. You mentioned names like Claudius Gothicus as well, which I'm very, very much determined to get into this episode. But you have, this is the third century. This is a time of turmoil in the Roman empire. But when approaching the figure of Zenobia and how she fits into this,

I mean, what types of sources do you have available to learn her story? Bad ones, as always, with the third century, they're not great. The main one is the world's most complicated source, which is the Historia Augusta, which is either a history that was written somewhere in the fourth century about the emperors and empresses of the third century, about the emperors and empresses of the third century, which doesn't know what it's doing and also tells lies and is a very, very bad history. So the way it's presented is as a series of biographies of these emperors, each one written by a different person.

And it claims it was written in the fourth century, but it clearly wasn't because it uses terms that weren't in use then. So it was definitely written at a different time. and also it has just enormous amount of inaccuracies and overt lies and fictionalizations and things that we can prove are not true and it has confused people so it's either a history that is very bad just a bad historian pretending to be a lot of biographers, or it is a novel and it is something like I, Claudius or Wolf Hall and it is a novel written as a series of biographies but fictionalising the history of the third century. It's not actually intending to be believed

but it is telling a recognisable story in a fictionalised way. We know for a fact you can't trust it for everything and everything that it says just cannot be trusted. We know for a fact you can't trust it for everything and everything that it says could just cannot be trusted we know for a fact that it lies basically but if you understand it as fiction and as it's telling you kind of broad strokes of what you know like if you're going to write a novel about henry the eighth or julius caesar you would have the beats of his life that you would tell but you would fictionalize some conversations or you might fictionalize what they look like or you would tell your exciting version for your audience.

If you read it like that, then you can take the beats of the story and be like, OK, these people existed and this is broadly what happened to them. And you can discard the details. So that's how I tend to read them. I read them like I read sharp novels is how I put it. Everything I know about the Napoleonic Wars comes from Sharp novels. So I know the Battle of Waterloo happened, but I'm pretty sure that Richard Sharp wasn't there. And that is basically how I read the Historia Augusta. And that is where we get the only linear version of the story of Zenobia of like, this is where she came from, this is what she did, and this is where she ended up. But we also have sources from things as

diverse as the Bible and Persian stories and Arabic, almost fairy tales and Jewish writings and Christian letters. And so she turns up as a ruler in all of these different sources where she is clearly ruling this area as a queen or an empress, where she is somebody who sorts out problems. She is a judge. She is somebody who resolves issues that communities are having between one another. And so we know that she existed and that she was a ruler from lots of other sources, but her relationship with the Roman Empire, we largely know from this dodgy little novel. I had no idea that some information about Zenobia comes from the Bible, but it's so interesting with something like the Historia Augusta, which is dodgy.

It almost feels like the Roman equivalent of the Hellenistic, I mean, Justin or something like that, where, as you say, you get the overview of certain events, but go into the detail of this source at your peril. Those parts of Zenobia's story where you were saying how certain parts of the history of Augusta can be proven to be untrue, is that where archaeology comes into play or maybe epigraphy or coinage? Yeah, coinage and things like that. Or even just, we have Cassius Dio who's writing the same time that this is set. And so you can compare what he says, like he is an eyewitness to Alexander Severus and Elagabalus and stuff like that. And so you kind of trust that what he's

saying is certain things rather than when the Historia Augusta disagrees. And sometimes it will just plainly say stuff that isn't true. Or it just uses terminology, like it will say somebody was in a position that did not exist at that time. So they can't possibly have been in that position because that position wasn't invented until midway through the fourth century. So this person under Hadrian definitely wasn't doing that job. And it will do easily disprovable things like that. Well, let's get into it. Let's set the scene. You mentioned names like Alexander Severus and Elagabalus. So good luck with this, Emma, to describe this turmoil. What kind of world is Zenobia born into?

Okay, so Zenobia is born mid-third century. She is born in Syria in Pamira, is where she is from. And she's born into the Roman Empire. So she's post the edict, which made everybody in the empire a citizen. So she's born a Roman citizen, and she is born into the third century crisis where there's basically, there are threats on three of the Roman borders. So you've got the Goths on the Danube border, you have the Germans and Alemanni and things like that are all up on the northern border. And then you also have assassinated empire down in the south who are getting rambunctious. And all of these people are stressing Roman power at the edges and nobody can hold it all together. There are various attempts to split it into the Tetrarchy or to have dual emperors or for a father

and son to rule. But all of them are what are called barracks emperors. So 99% of them are generals who have come up from nowhere declared themselves emperor menaced the senate into agreeing and then very often they get killed very quickly by their own troops or by somebody else's troops because some other general has also declared themselves emperor and then there's a battle there's also a plague called the plague of cyprian which is stressing everybody. And there's a lot of economic troubles as well as a result of stressed supply lines and bad weather and plagues and the constant of having to raise people and raise armies from the fields in order to fight on one or other. Battlefield means that there's also economic problems. Everybody's poorer and food is more expensive. So it is a very stressful time where there's no real single power that anyone can coalesce around. There's lots of different fronts where violence is taking place. Everybody's kind of ill all the time. And no one knows who the emperor is from one minute to the next and in such situations places around the edge of the empire places that are newer into the empire are kind of neglected like a governor's term runs out and nobody ever really turns up to take over or tax collectors just stop bothering to come and collect

tax for a few years and then they turn up and like the trappings of roman power that you have seen of roman bureaucracy that have hold it together kind of devolve down to anyone in the area who is willing to take it on so rather than someone coming from rome and you know early empire what you see is that most governors and procurators and things like that are people coming from Rome, going into somewhere for five years or whatever, and then coming back. But you start to see people from the area take on those bureaucratic roles. They become the leader of the army in the area.

They become the person who is collecting taxes. They become the person who is administering justice. And Zenobia's husband is one of those men in Palmyra. He takes on for the emperor and with the agreement of the emperor, the job of running the province of Syria and also looking after the province of Mesopotamia, which goes right the way down into Iraq, which is the very edge of the empire.

And no one in Rome or around the empire has the money or time or energy to be looking after Mesopotamia and Syria right now so Zenobia's husband does it for them. But it's interesting isn't it Emma like how quickly things change because earlier in that century and I know you focus on these women as well in your book. I mean, you have the likes of Elagabalus and then Julia, Mamea and Julia Maesa, and they are all in that area of the world, of the eastern part of the empire. And yet in those decades since then, as you see, you see this almost this shift of attention, this shift of power, this lack of attention by the middle, by the heart of the Roman empire to the province of Syria. Yeah. It's really interesting that you see Syria emerge really quickly

in the late 2nd century, early 3rd century, as a place where powerful people can come from because Julia Domna is the first one. She marries Septimius Severus and then takes basically her entire family to Rome. When she goes to Rome, she does what the Romans do best, which is massive nepotism, and sweeps up her entire family and takes them to Rome and gives them all jobs and makes them consuls. And then Mesa keeps that going, who's her sister. She basically refuses. When Julia Domina is overthrown and her children are all stabbed, Julia Mesa's like, well, I quite liked

being an empress actually, so I'm going to continue being an empress. So she does. She leads two coups and maintains her power in Rome until the day she dies, which is very impressive. And it's a thing that's very often written out. I think of a lot of histories of the Roman Empire, the importance of Syria and the importance of the East. It tends to be to Rome and to central Roman power. Like it tends to be like, oh, there's this split and you get Constantinople. But long before Constantinople, a huge power bases with huge military and political power in the east of the empire. And Syria is a really important space for the history of Rome. And interestingly, what you mostly see come out of it is women.

Absolutely. I mean, let's go back to Zenobia then, because you mentioned just before that, that she marries this big figure in Palmyra, the figure of Odonathus. I'm guessing, therefore, do we actually know much at all about Zenobia's life before that, her rise or her background? Or is that something that we just don't know much at all? Absolutely. You're laughing already. I think, there we go.

Yeah, it's a very quick answer to that, isn't it? We know nothing about women before they get married or do a coup, basically, unless they are attached to a man. It's virtually impossible. We know that she says on mile markers that her father calls herself Zenobia, daughter of Antiochus, which might be her dad. We have no idea who that is. It might be that she is making a metaphorical daughter of Antiochus, who was the kings of Syria before it was absorbed into the empire. And she's making some kind of claim to divinity. Or it might be that her dad was actually called Antiochus and he was just a guy called Antiochus. But we have no idea. But that's everything we know. We know that her husband was married before and he had children who were adults by the time he married her. So she was probably younger than him.

And we know that she had at least one child. Some sources are like, oh, she had seven children. Only one is ever named. So the rest are irrelevant. So far as we know, she definitely had one son with Orianthus before he was horribly murdered. Oh, spoiler alert. Okay, go on then. Spoiler alert. Everyone is horribly murdered in Roman history. Yeah, fair enough. I've got the date 260 in my notes here. This seems to be when the big event happens and then Odianthus encounters his downfall following that. Yeah, he takes control of the armies, basically. So in 260 is when there is a real

push by the Sassanid empires into Mesopotamia, and it looks like everything is going to fall apart and nobody is sending any help, essentially. And so with the permission of the emperor at the time, Adonis takes control of the armies, just takes them all under his wing and leads a war and pushes the Sassadids out of Mesopotamia, completely reclaims the province and everybody is happy. And he basically makes himself the governor of the entire region. He is clearly a big man in the region before that, but this is a point at which he makes a real impact and says, I am going to fight for the empire. And then what he doesn't do, and this is the really important part, is declare himself Augustus. A similar kind of time, you've got a guy over in Gaul who has fought off some usurpers and then declared himself emperor of Gaul and just split off in his own empire, just started a Gallic empire. It's just his thing that

he's doing over there. Somebody in Antioch at the same time declares himself and his two sons to be the Augustuses and says, we are Augustuses. I'm Augustus and so is my wife. But he does not. He specifically says, I have reclaimed this for the emperor. And then he writes a letter back to Rome and says, everything's all right. And then he gets given this title which is either like commander of the east or protector of the east which has is either like a legal co-emperorship kind of thing or is just an honorary OBE type thing but nobody knows because it's only recorded in Aramaic and we don't know what a proper translation into Latin would be. But he is given this title and he is given approval by the emperor, and he very much makes this bid to

protect the borders of the empire as they exist and to keep himself as a subordinate to the emperor rather than, I am a big man and I'm going to be the emperor or I'm going to make my own empire. He is exceptionally loyal, which is a marked change from what most other people are doing in the empire at the time. Right. So he's declaring his loyalty to Rome following this actual massive Roman disaster that they suffered against the Sassanids. I think the emperor Valerian becomes the personal footstool, doesn't he, of the Sassanid king Shapur? Yeah, poor old Valerian. Everybody loses to the Persians eventually,

but Valerian is a person taken alive instead of dying valiantly in battle. And he's enslaved by the Sassanids and Shapur I, I think, and then stories filter back that he has been enslaved and is being used as a footstool. Once was the emperor of Rome and is now a footstool. Well, fair play to Odoenathus, I'm going to say. I might have got butchered that, but fair play to him for staying loyal following that massive Roman disaster. Also really interesting what you're saying there about Aramaic. So they've got Latin, they've got Greek,

they've got Aramaic in Palmyra, this great crossroads of these different cultures. But as you've hinted at earlier it doesn't end well for this big man in palmyra no bless him he is murdered as virtually everyone who has any power whatsoever in the roman empire at this point is murdered by a kind of member of his own family this is from the history of augusta so like pinch of salt but the story is that he tries to punish one of his cousins by taking away his horse and his cousin is so offended that he just stabs the king overkill which is such a roman way of dealing with problems if it's in your way just stab it and then zenobia really acts in a

very unusual way and comes out of the shadows and makes herself his heir. So how does Zenobia react to the death of her husband? Now, does she try and seize power? I mean, she doesn't even seize power. She just steps into power. He has an older son who's died already, but they have a son together called Vabalathus, who is an infant. And she basically acts as though her husband had been a king or had been an emperor

and that therefore her son would take all of his titles and all of his job responsibilities. And because he was a child, she would obviously be his regent, which is unusual because technically he's not a king. She's not a queen. Technically, they are just kind of officials within the Roman Empire. And even if anybody had been given, Claudius Gothicus, I think is the emperor at the time, had been given them official titles, you don't inherit the job of consul of Rome and you don't inherit the job

of governor. It's like being a civil servant. But she just steps right in as though these were inheritable titles and just starts doing the exact job that her husband was doing in the name of her son. And nobody really seems to question this at any point. And this is where it gets complicated around what she's doing and who she thinks she is, and why people often will see her as somebody who tried to leave the Roman Empire and invade it, because only emperors act that way. Nobody anywhere else in the empire is acting as though being the general of the army is something that an infant can inherit and their mother can do for them. But she just does. She's

just like, well, it seems like you've been calling me a queen for ages and it feels like I'm the best person to do this, so I'm just going to do it. So she does and she sets herself up a court in Balmira as if she were a regent for her son as an emperor or a king, gets in people who are her advisors and she sets up a little almost like neoplatonic philosopher's court. She gets all these philosophers from Greece to stand around and chat with her, which is nice. And she starts doing things like judging court cases and asking people about monotheism and people write to her from Syrian cities and say, this bishop's written some new Psalms and we think that it's heretical. Do you have any opinions on this? And she's like, not really. She basically just instantly steps

into the role of leader of this part of the empire until such a time as someone's going to tell her to stop, which they never do. Because that again leads on to my next question as to how does the Roman emperor of the time react? And if we're at this time, we're in the late 260s now, we have one of my favourite emperors, just because I love his nickname, Claudius II Gothicus on the throne. But the nickname in his short reign, it suggests that he doesn't really spend much time. Do we know how he reacts to Zenobia in the East? There's a lot of questions about how he reacts. At some point, he gives himself the name Perzicus or Parthicus, which is a bit much, which suggests that she's doing something over in Parthia. He

largely seems to kind of ignore her. He is doing stuff over in the West and he just seems to show little to no interest until he suddenly ends up with this name attached to him, which is the only suggestion that she is doing military work. That and the fact that down in Iraq, there are some forts which have her name on them. So she's building forts in Iraq, some forts which have her name on them. So she's building forts in Iraq, we know that. But there's questions over whether he was going to come and fight her or was going to let her be, but he largely seems to be distracted by the Goths. All right then, so Claudius Gothicus, he doesn't last very long, but you'll love this reference. When does Zenobia almost cross her Rubicon? Around about the time that Claudius II Gothicus dies, bless him. He dies of plague,

which genuinely takes everybody by surprise because it's quite unusual at this time for an emperor to die of natural causes. And 90% of the time during the century, when an emperor dies, it's because someone has stabbed them so they can become emperor. So there is already somebody waiting to 10 minutes later, send a letter. Although there's already a letter on its way to the Senate saying, I'm the emperor now, don't worry. But this time there isn't. And everybody kind of thrown into chaos. And the Senate is like, this guy's emperor. And four different legions are like, no, no, no, my guy's emperor. And she takes advantage of this. gay's emperor and she takes advantage of this this is 270 she takes advantage of this and throws her hat in the ring basically and invades arabia she raises an army

and invades the province of arabia which is that kind of top bit of the levant and defeats and destroys the legion that is up there and burns them to the ground and then keeps marching into the most valuable of the Roman provinces, the one that they care about the most more than any other. She marches into Egypt and gets right down to Alexandria and boots out the governor of Egypt and plonks herself down as the ruler of what is now a very big chunk of the Eastern Roman Empire. And this is seriously bold now, isn't it? This is brutal aggression, attacking Roman soldiers, laying siege to Roman towns and provincial centres, and then Alexandria. It's almost impossible to overstate how important controlling this area of

the empire is, especially when you look at, well, let's say the grain supply. Yeah, Egypt is considered to be the bread bowl of the empire. It is the place where so much of the grain that comes out and feeds Rome and feeds the West all comes out of Alexandria. And from the moment that Augustus made it a province, he has made it a rule that senators aren't even allowed to go there. You're not allowed to go there if you have even an inkling of Imperium because it's so important that the Emperor controls Alexandria and no one can threaten it. Because if you can cut off Alexandria, you can starve Rome and you can starve a big old chunk of Italy and the Western Roman Empire to death. And they will have to capitulate to you because all you need to do is stop boats getting out. But she does not do that. All she does other than, well, she destroys one legion and kills a few thousand people, but who at this stage hasn't? But she sits down and she basically

immediately starts ruling in a very bureaucratic way. And she starts pumping out coins and pumping out paperwork because Romans love paperwork almost as much as they love murder, pumping out paperwork, declaring that her son is the co-emperor of Rome. So that's almost like she's done these movements, you know, the slaughtering of thousands of people. I mean, that's still quite a big thing and taking control of these super important areas of the empire and then almost trying to hold back and try to work with that new guy in the center of the empire i'm guessing that this doesn't work out i'm not sure this figure in the center this new ruler is going to quite accept that he doesn't i think if it had been anybody else virtually anyone else

in the entire history of the third century, and she might have got away with this because she holds Egypt and she has that power. Anybody else who was a bit cowardly might have gone, okay, fine, just don't cut me off and we'll be friends and you can have that part and I'll have this part and we'll deal with it together. But unfortunately, the person who had come out of the 270 nightmare was the only way that you can describe him. power and charisma and ability to direct troops, have people love him, keep people loyal to him, and fight on multiple fronts at the same time. And also the kind of self-belief to continually do

this. And when he hears that someone has taken Egypt, he immediately makes a treaty on the Danube, pivots and just runs across Turkey in order to turn up and tell her that this is not acceptable. He never asked for a child co-emperor. He never asked for anyone to be ruling Egypt on his behalf. He doesn't need any help, actually. And he puts a pause on everything that has been distracting emperors for such a long time over on the Danube and pivots hard to the east to resolve this. Zenobia, bless her, immediately recognizes that this is different, that this isn't going to be some stern letters, that there's a lot of troops coming to her and she doesn't have the numbers to do it. So she pulls back out of Egypt pretty fast and retreats back to Syria and is like,

sorry. But at no point does she stop calling herself an Augusta. We have coinage, loads of coinage that she is pumping out from Antioch, the mint in Antioch in Arabia, and also mile markers and things on statues where she is calling herself Augusta. She is calling her son Augustus and she is putting Juno on the back of her queens and like Victoria and very much presenting herself as though she were Livia or something like that. She is presenting herself as though she was an Augustus of Rome and she fights really hard but it becomes very clear quite quickly that Aurelian outnumbers her and outmatches her. But they have three big old battles about it, but at no point does she stop calling herself an Augusta and acting in a way that suggests that

she really thinks that she has a chance being his partner or being his equal right up until the point at which he captures her. Well, I was going to say, so what ultimately happens to Zenobia, but it sounds therefore that Aurelian wins the battles, takes Zenobia captive, and that's the end of Zenobia as wanting to be the ruler of Palmyra. Yeah, basically, they have these three big battles in Syria. And a real marker for Aurelian, one of the reasons that he manages to be so successful all the time is that he doesn't pillage and burn places after he has won them. So he besieges cities, so he besieges Antioch, for example, but he doesn't then raise it or pillage it, or he keeps his troops under

control and he doesn't punish cities for resisting him, which means that they don't then turn around and fight him after he's left base. He doesn't make himself new enemies. And so he is able to go fairly unimpeded as he defeats Zenobia. She runs from city to city. Eventually in Palmyra, he catches her as he's besieging it and she tries to escape. And again, this is from the Augusta, so pinch of salt. But the story is that she is riding a camel across the desert, trying to get away, potentially trying to fight another day. But she is captured. He puts her on trial for treason and finds her guilty. But again, he is so kind of ludicrously merciful almost

that he just sentences her to being imprisoned in Rome, but a kind of Roman royal imprisonment. So he takes her and presumably her son who disappears. We never hear anything about what happens. He executes her male companions. So she has these male advisors who he executes. But he takes her back to Rome and parades her in a triumph. But then she gets to live, as far as we know,

a fairly happy rest of her life. She's only probably in her 30s or 40s maybe when this happens. We know that 150 years later she has descendants because they pop up in another source. And so she presumably either has other children or her son has children, and they live this life in Rome that is probably not as bad as you might think somebody who declared themselves an Augustan. He does the same thing with the people who start the Gallic Empire when he defeats the Gallic Empire because he is a gigachad. And he also fights in Gaul and reclaims Britain and makes peace with the Goths.

And everybody thinks he's very handsome and all the rest. He not only welcomes them back into Rome, he gives them jobs and he allows them to be bureaucrats and have leadership roles within the empire again, even though they literally started another empire without him. So he is very merciful and it means that everybody likes him as a result. And Zenobia probably got quite a happy ending out of it. I still cannot get over the description of Aurelian as a Giga Chad. When we do an episode on Aurelian in the future on the ancients, the subtitle will be Giga Chad of Rome. I promise that.

So the thing is, once you've thought it, you can't think of a better way to describe it. He has charisma, he has power, and he's a nice guy as well. Like he's everything you want. Well, Emma, I mean, before we completely wrap up, it's really interesting. And what you highlighted there was that actually

these events, they happen really, really quickly from Odonathus' death in the late 260s to Zenobia being taken captive in the early 270s by Aurelian. So her zenith doesn't last very long before the fall. And yet, this is something I didn't really know until reading your book. I mean, she still has a legacy down to today in Syria as this prominent figure. She's very much remembered very similarly to how we remember Boudicca in England. So she has a very similar history in that she is remembered in Syrian history as a resistor of Western power and as somebody who briefly,

successfully fought off the Romans and reclaimed it. She was on Syrian coinage on banknotes for quite a long time. And there is a famous TV show that was made about her, much like the big old TV shows that we make about Boudicca and things like that, as a freedom fighter. But she's then been co-opted by various political causes within Syria. So during the civil war, ISIS would carry statues of her at exactly the same time that they were destroying Palmyra. But she was considered to be a symbol of resistance

against Western hegemony for them. And she maintains this image, but she's not really. Much like the Goths, much like the Huns, much like virtually everybody who ever met the Romans, she just wanted to join in.

She wanted to join in. She wanted to be in Rome and she wanted to be Roman and she was Roman and she just wanted to rule. Well, Emma, that's a nice way to end it. Last but certainly not least, you have written a book all about Zenobia, but also many other women from the Roman period. I have. It is called A History of the Roman Empire in 21 Women, which is a snappy title. It does exactly what it says on the tin. It starts at the very beginning at the foundation of Rome. It goes through to the near enough the fall of the Western Empire through 21 women that you've probably not heard of before from all over the empire talking about Syria and Britain and Germany and hopefully giving a more expansive idea of what Roman life and history

was like. Well, Emma, it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast today. Thank you so much for having me. Well, there you go. There was Dr Emma Southern talking through the life, the amazing story of Queen Zenobia, the ruler of Palmyra and the short-lived Palmyrene Empire. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Last thing from me, wherever you're listening to the podcast, do make sure that you follow, that you're subscribed to The Ancient so you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice every week. But that's enough from me and I will see you in the next episode.